It’s the final stretch of 2025, and I’m sitting in a movie theater when, quite suddenly, I realize no one is watching the movie.

This is well after the 20-minute previews and commercials (one of which has Nicole Kidman extolling the virtues of going to the movies in a way that sounds suspiciously like begging). We’re a half hour into the film.

And everyone is on their phones.

It resembles a weird candlelit vigil, or a demon-summoning Black Mass. The theater screen is a massively bright rectangle above, though every set of eyes is fixated on the smaller screens in their hands. And I’m thinking: what could possibly be so important that everyone here needs to check their phones? Did aliens land at the White House?

I start digging my own phone from a pocket. What’s happening in the world? Somewhere, the internet is abuzz like an overturned wasp nest! And then something remarkable happens.

I wipe the sweat from my brow, take a deep breath, and…

… bury the phone back in my pocket. Leave the vampire in its crypt.

I’m hungry after the movie, and as I don’t eat theater popcorn (that viscous yellow slop does not come from earthly cows) I go to Olive Garden. Seeing the signpost puts the jingle in my head: “When you’re here, you’re family!”

All around me, at every table, are zombies.

Couples face each other, but their eyes are hitched to their phones. An actual family—mommy and daddy and two little girls— are pawing at glowing screens like the undead at a mall window. I remember an episode of Star Trek The Next Generation, where an addictive game is brought onto the Enterprise, and soon everyone is glued to it, walking around without seeing each other. “I am on Level 47!” one crew-woman gushes, and this was in 1991, 21 years before Candy Crush.

The next day, I go to the park. It’s not so cold yet that a few laps are out of the question. All around me are zombies. The phones are like alien facehuggers, devouring all attention. Someone falls while walking; no one looks up to see if he’s okay.

Christmas with my family has us doing the Italian tradition of seven fishes on Christmas Eve. There’s a law somewhere that It’s a Wonderful Life must be on TV, but we feel like rebels and keep the TV off. The rebellion is short-lived however. My mother —the very woman who took a decade to understand how an answering machine worked —is glued to her phone.

During gift-giving? Phones glowing like little cyclopean spirits. During dinner, conversation is regularly sidelined by “look at this video!”

Want a litmus test to see if someone has an addiction? Try confronting them —even gently— on their addictive behavior. Watch the responses. The knee-jerk defensiveness. “What? I don’t have a drinking problem!” or “I don’t always gamble at the casino” or the classic “I can stop any time.” Now try it with people who can’t seem to put their phone down. “I’m just sending a text” or “it’s for work” or the classic “I can stop any time.”

So is the answer to go full Luddite and start using carrier pigeons for communication? Of course not. The genie isn’t going back in the bottle, but we don’t have to rub the bottle incessantly. We don’t have to behave as cocaine-addicted rats in a lab experiment.

A couple years ago, I went to Greece, visiting Santorini where thousands of years ago a mighty and advanced civilization was destroyed. I watched a stunning sunset of bewitching colors melt over the wine dark sea…

…while every tourist was stuck on their phones.

Science fiction warns us that a zombie apocalypse is coming. But I’ve come to realize that in a very troubling way, it’s already here.

Brian Trent lives in Prospect.